Apple shares topped $500 for the first time in seven months, moving as high as $504.25 before falling back to end the day's trading session with a 1.8 percent advance at $498.50. Apple stock has now gained 10.2 percent in the month of August after advancing 14 percent in July

(FILES)The Apple logo is seen in this September 11, 2012 file photo at the Yerba Buena Center for Arts in San Francisco. KIMIHIRO HOSHINO/AFP/Getty Images
(KIMIHIRO HOSHINO)

siliconvalley/quote?Symbol=NFLX">NFLX) and Hulu. VentureBeat, which originally broke the story Tuesday, reported that a source quoted an acquisition price of $1 million to $1.5 million, though the actual amount could be higher.

Despite the move, attention was still squarely on Icahn, who tweeted Tuesday that he had amassed a sizable investment in Apple and been able to speak with CEO Tim Cook about Icahn's desire for a more robust stock-repurchase program from Apple, which committed $60 billion to buying back shares earlier this year.

Analysts disagreed on whether Icahn would be able to successfully push Apple to buy back more shares: UBS analyst Steven Milunovich deemed it "unlikely" after the company already went into debt to finance a $100 billion overall plan to return cash to shareholders, but Barclay's analyst Ben Reitzes noted that Apple could easily add another $15 billion or so to its buyback program thanks to its large free cash flow, which he predicted would add $1.10 to the company's earnings per share in the 2015 fiscal year.

Bloomberg News reported that Icahn had snatched up about $1 billion in Apple stock, while the Wall Street Journal reported a purchase of about $1.5 billion, but that would not even place Icahn in the top 50 largest shareholders in Apple, according to FactSet. Analysts still expect the investor's outsize influence will allow him to agitate more than some larger stakeholders, however.

"Very rarely is Icahn's first request his final request," Moor Insights and Strategy analyst Patrick Moorhead told the Los Angeles Times. "I expect Apple to balk initially and then Icahn to go into action until he gets what he thinks he deserves. This will get uglier before it gets resolved."

SV150 market report: Cisco, NetApp and Agilent release earnings after down day for Wall Street

Apple pushed Silicon Valley stocks to a small gain on the day, even as the larger Wall Street indexes fell, but most of the action took place after Wednesday's regular session, when three of the region's 15 largest tech companies released quarterly earnings.

Cisco Systems announced it would lay off 5 percent of its workforce during its earnings conference call Wednesday afternoon, and its stock took a big hit. The San Jose networking giant reported earnings of 42 cents a share on record quarterly revenues of $12.4 billion, representing strong year-over-year growth: Profits gained 18 percent and sales were up 6 percent. Analysts had expected slightly stronger profits, however, with a Thomson Reuters survey showing an average forecast of 44 cents a share, and Cisco announced in its earnings call that it would lay off 4,000 people beginning in 2014. Cisco stock plummeted in late trading to less than $24 after it ended the regular session with a 0.2 percent gain at $26.37.

Sunnyvale storage company NetApp followed a similar path to Cisco, posting year-over-year gains but falling in late trading. NetApp reported profits of 23 cents a share on revenues of $1.51 billion, but the company's stock fell more than 4 percent in late trading after closing Wednesday's session with a 0.1 percent gain to $42.33. Santa Clara biotech equipment giant Agilent went the other way from its Silicon Valley neighbors, posting a year-over-year dip in profits and revenues to earnings of 49 cents a share on sales of $1.65 billion, but the company's stock rose more than 3 percent in after-hours action after dropping 0.9 percent to $46.51 in regular trading.

And the widely watched Standard & Poor's 500 index: Down 8.77, or 0.52 percent, to 1,685.39

Check in weekday afternoons for the 60-Second Business Break, a summary of news from Mercury News staff writers, The Associated Press, Bloomberg News and other wire services. Contact Jeremy C. Owens at 408-920-5876; follow him at Twitter.com/mercbizbreak.